User blog:Nathanhazz/Balancing Desolator
That's right! I've received permission from Exser to speak in advance of 0.81's release regarding the balancing of Desolator. First, a disclaimer. In this post, I'm not speaking as the voice of the wiki, as I usually do. This is me as an individual, writing regarding my process and reasoning behind the suggestions I've made about Desolator in the 0.81 closed beta. My thoughts here are not the thoughts of Exser, or even the other beta testers, although I think I've spoken fairly in their place. Also, I will be discussing unreleased changes to Desolator in this article, however, 0.81 is not released, and all is subject to change. I'll also be keeping my secrets, but this will give you a general idea of the intent and design behind changes made to other classes, and all of Idle Wizard in 0.81. This is by no means a changelog, or any kind of official announcement. How did Desolator get this broken? Firstly, some history. As anyone who's played Desolator has noticed, this class is broken. Desolator's current strength is not what was intended when the class was designed. The first thing to understand is that Desolator is exceedingly complicated. He has 3 different elixirs, multiple viable pet options, more strong spells than he can use in a single burst, and which all scale off different values. Another weird aspect of Desolator is how he uses Void Mana. Desolator can't collect Void Mana, like Umbramancer. However, Desolator has multiple spells ( and ) which scale based on void mana profits, void mana per entity, etc. Odd, I know. That's probably why nobody noticed at first that you could play him with . Now Voidterror's void mana wasn't doing anything. But Voidterror increases Void Mana power. As it turns out, Alchemist was really great at levelling Voidterror. Apparently Alchemist's Pet Elixir scales incredibly well with e400+ enchanted items. And since Voidterror levels based on the void mana he produces, this allowed e500 Alchemist players to get incredible amounts of Void Mana. In the range of what you'd only expect to earn with Oni. And, since Voidterror scales off of total void mana this exile, this little stunt allowed Desolator to power-level Voidterror all on his own, even if you switched pets later. Why did it take so long to fix Desolator Now that you know how Desolator got so good, you're probably wondering why this wasn't fixed. Desolator's been nerfed several times since his release, and remains utterly dominant as the strongest class, to the chagrin of many. There's loads of "community" reasons this may have happened, and I've seen plenty of angry speculation along those lines. I'd like to take a moment to address that this game is made by people who deeply care, and are doing everything they can to provide this game for free, in as fun a state as possible. As such, I'd like to respect everyone involved, and forego any rude speculation. I encourage you to do the same. Skipping that unfortunate note, the primary reason is that it's complicated. GraveFGrave, the Kongregate user to first post this strategy, is a genius for noticing this. I sort of want to shake his hand. The problem passes through all those values before, and comes to this. scales with Void Mana Power by a power of 1. Void Fission has 2 effects, and each scales with Void Mana Power by a power of 0.65. All those powers are well within reasonable parameters. The problem is, that there's 3 of them. Altogether, that means Desolator's profit scales with Void Mana Power by a factor of at least 2.3!! It just so happens that the one thing GraveFGrave found an oddball exploit to maximize had massive scaling. This core misunderstanding is incredibly difficult to see, just looking at the numbers. It sounds simple, but none of the basic suggestions I've seen posted on discord would have solved this problem. None of the nerfs that happened in earlier versions would have ever worked either, at least not without completely destroying Desolator's ability to profit normally. Why we make the changes we do I'm going to hold off one moment before telling you what we changed to fix this, to discuss our goals, and do a general "FAQ" of comments I see often. This will be important to understand why we make the changes we do, so just bear with me. Don't nerf Desolator, buff everyone else to his level I'm sorry guys, but this just isn't the way forward. I understand, and this might be the most fun for those of you currently stuck at e500. But, for the future of this game, Desolator progresses way too fast. From e1 to e300, there's a fun, steady progression, and the best version of Idle Wizard would have that from e300-e500 as well. Desolator breaks that entirely, and a capable player could get from e300-e400 in something like a week. Especially if we try to buff the class to push even further. And, without referring to GraveFGrave's build, he isn't nearly as powerful. If a player wants to tinker with Desolator organically, there's nothing for him. This just isn't fun for new players, and will not be our goal. Nobody else can progress past e500 You're right. As of v0.8, hardly any class can progress past e500. Some Shaman players have managed it with 30 day runs, and a lot of "get mysts" from experiments, but for normal players, there's hardly any options. One thing we definitely don't want to do with this update is leave players stranded, with no viable options. Utterly nerfing Desolator in a vacuum would absolutely do this. That's why 0.81 comes with a slew of changes. There's lots of content to help every class push further than ever before, and even Desolator isn't being nerfed entirely, but rather being reworked. v0.81 will see Desolator receive both nerfs and buffs, to bring him in line with a more consistent scaling, that will be able to push past e500. Unfortunately, if you're e550+ already, this update will likely leave you a bit cold. New options, and increased viability of every class should give you plenty to do, but it's currently impractical to balance for pushing e600+. This is something that will have to be done for every T2 class at once, and developing that much content would significantly delay the release of 0.81. I ask that you bear with us. Explore other classes, hoard some dust, and we'll get to you as quickly as we can. Desolator will just be nerfed until he's unplayable No! Our goal with Desolator is to keep him fun and interesting, while allowing him to be viable alongside the other T2 classes. I've been playing a TON of Desolator these past 2 weeks, and the class is fun, complicated, and engaging. If you're currently playing Desolator, I implore you to take him on, learn his quirks, and help push him into a new meta once 0.81 releases. The fact is, Desolator is the most complex and active class of all the T2s. As such, it only makes sense that Desolator would be the strongest T2 class, and I've aimed to keep that the case, while making him fun to play and constraining his power fairly. The sad side effect of these reworks are, that GraveFGrave's way of playing the class is definitely not the strongest way to play him anymore. As a result, BiS equipment will likely change significantly. I'd ask any Desolator players to start hoarding their dust in anticipation of 0.81, and the mad rush to find the optimal way to play this crazy class. I'm so excited to see what you guys can find, and half expect Desolator to still be broken by our clever community despite my best efforts. "Fixing" Desolator Now for the part you've been waiting for. Our first order of business was to address that 2.3 scaling with Void Mana power. After hours of discussion and debate in the IW Beta discord, Void Fission has become unlockable via an upgrade, and purchasing this upgrade removes Shadows Of The Void. In addition, Void Fission has become something much cooler: A fusion of Void and Shadow. Void Fission's second effect now scales based on Liquid Shadow! This fits the lore of the Class well, removes 2 points of scaling for void mana power, and actually serves as an interesting buff if you aren't using the Voidterror strategy. Void Fission's effect on profits is actually greater than it was before in most cases, and a new spell slot is open for one of Desolator's other great spells. Funnily enough, Desolator was actually still crazy strong after these changes. As a starting place, we roughly balanced Desolator to earn the same mysts/day as other classes starting with one save. This is something we've been doing with each class, and as of this writing, Tempo, Archon, and Desolator all fit that nicely (Don't panic, we're already regularly discussing and tinkering with Heretic, Oni, and Shaman). To meet this, we adjusted Desolator's main character ability, and offline power now scales less character ability power. This brings Desolator more in line with other classes, who generally scale overall profits with character ability power, by a power of 1. It's still a powerful stat in a lot of ways though, so don't disenchant your item sets yet. This is where we get into the funny part of Desolator.... just as I reached this mark, Jey suggested I should test the class with Ebonsand Behemoth. Oops, suddenly I was earning 8 times the mysteries I expected again. Cue buffing void mana power scaling back up a touch, and nerfing some other values, like Shadow Elixir. These changes were made to at least try to bring the current LS closer to spent LS, and to weaken the class in an overall sense. This happens again and again. At this moment, my Desolator burst has completely changed 3 times! When it comes to beta Desolator, I'm the only player, with no BiS calc, no community of players to bounce ideas with, just me and some new cheat codes to get dust quickly, bursting again and again while moving items around, enchanting, and looking at how much mana I can get from . And I must say, it's been a great deal of fun. I can't wait to show you what we've done and engage you all in testing Desolator, and for some genius to utterly destroy the class again. Also new in this update, is a lot of new testing processes. Desolator has pushed our testing abilities to the maximum, and we've pushed Exser to develop a lot of new tools. For example, those new cheat codes I mentioned. The closed beta now includes some shortcuts to get crafting dust, enchanting dust, even "get mysts"! Why do I tell you all this? Because I want you to know that we're doing everything we can to test these changes in depth, and whatever happens in 0.81, we've done our absolute best to ensure it's the best that it can be. At the moment, I have a Desolator run beside me. I've used cheats to get all my equipment to enchant 10, and have "abused" about a handful of "get mysts" to push about e30 mysts higher. And I hit a wall where I couldn't profit. Because in v0.8 Desolator is immensely powerful, but never scaled well. That's why there's such a hard wall at e550. And that's something we're trying to fix. To start, I've pushed Exser to readdress some past changes, and has made a return! Stacking Condensed Energy and Denaturation overnight allowed me to push e2 more LS, and I profited about 7x more than planned. So.... more adjustment to needs to happen. In fact, Exser's already uploaded a new beta version with a change that looks good on paper, and I've put off testing it to write this. Our goal for the long-term of this game is to have six T2 classes that scale well, receiving upgrades and new spells just as they falter, so that you can take any one of them and play everything e300+ with whichever one you choose. All of this said, I hope v0.81 meets your expectations, and enhances the game for all players, old and new. Category:Blog posts